- Survived mostly as foragers or hunter-gatherers
- thorough knowledge of local botany
- 10,000 years ago: foraging to farming
- Agriculture arose in several places
- Farming = basis of advanced civilizations
- old and new worlds
Foraging Societies
- Foragers gather food provided by nature
- still practiced by indigenous cultures
- https://youtu.be/Pro6X_Kc5wA
- Selected for bipedalism in the Homo genus?
- or brain size increases?
- Does NOT imply a vegetarian diet
- Arctic Inuits = only meat
- Hadza of Tanzania = vegetarian
- !Kung of S. Africa = plants, eggs, fish, meat
How Native Americans are fighting a food crisis
Early Foragers
- Fossil evidence reveals the diets of early foragers
- charred seeds & preserved fruits
- bones, shells & feathers
- Coprolites: fossilized poop!
- pollen forensics
- Tool remains and cave drawings reveal meat diet
- 17,000 years ago: Wadi-Kubbaaniya in Nile Valley
- 25 plant species
- tubers of grasses with high starch
- plants needed to be ‘processed’
Modern Foragers
- Evidence from key modern foraging societies
- !Kung from tropical African savannas
- most studied remaining gatherer communities
- 10,000 years of foraging history
- continuing today
- !Kung forage over 100 species of plants and 50 animal species
- 2355 kilocalories a day
- 96 grams of protein
- adequate vitamins and minerals
- Dedicated division of labor along gender lines
- foraging = 2.5 days a week
Paleo Diet (Caveman’s diet)
- Recent diet trend returning to foraging past
- similar to hunter-gatherer periods
- No dairy, refined grains or sugars or legumes
- no available for past foragers
- Eat large quantities of meats, fruits, nuts, root vegetables and honey
- human body ‘adapted’ for this diet
- Based on the fallacy that humans bodies have not evolved
- lactase gene now ‘stays on’ passed infancy
- assumes one kind of forager diet
Agriculture: Revolution of Evolution?
- Archaeology shows plant cultivation started 10,000 years ago
- Agriculture flourished in Near East, Far East and Mesoamererica for thousands of years
- Question: Why the switch?
- a brilliant sage saw the power of seeds?
- was the transition a revolution?
- did a gradual cultural evolution take place?
- was it climate related?
European Stone Age
- Farming spread from Near East
- first to Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria
- ~7500 years ago farming spread to rest of Europe
- DNA from ancient European foragers compared to earliest farmers
- 15,000 - 4,300 years ago
- not related!!!
- DNA also compared to modern Europeans
- modern Europeans related to farmers, not foragers
- first farmers were immigrants, that spread agriculture
Theory of Latitudinal Spread (Jared Diamond)
- Theory of development & spread of agriculture
- certain areas of the world & not it others
- 0.7 miles per year
- East-West orientation in Eurasia
- crops & livestock outward from fertile crescent
- North-South orientation in Americas
- crops from Mexico to US (.5 miles/year)
- llama spread Peru to Ecuador (.2 miles/year)
- Direction of domestication interacts with climate!
Global Population tied to Agriculture
Early Sites of Agriculture (Far East ~11,500 years ago)
The Near East: Fertile Crescent
- Iran, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel
- some of the oldest sites of agriculture
The Near East: Fertile Crescent
- Iran, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel
- some of the oldest sites of agriculture
- Animals domesticated first
- sheep, cattle and goats
- Jarmo site: 24 houses with ~150 people
- 9,000 years ago
- domesticated grains + foraging
- Fun fact: Cats domesticated 4,000 years ago
- evidence from C4 plants!
The Far East: Yellow and Yangtze River Valleys
- Rice cultivation began 11,500 years ago
- farming then spread up- and down streams
- Domestication of millet, hemp, pigs, cattle & poultry after rice
- Silkworm domestication 5,000 years ago
- 354 genes differ between domestic & wild
- Horse domestication 5,000 years ago
- Batai from plains of Central Asia
The New World: Mexico and Peru
- Timing of plant domestication matches Fertile Crescent and Far East
- Domestication of plants dominant
- squash, corn, peppers, beans, avocado & potatoes
- Fewer animals domesticated
- dogs, turkeys, alpacas & guinea pigs
- Archaeology points to Peru for farming origins
- Corn domestication in central Mexico
- 5,000 years ago (found in caves)
- arrived in US ~2,000 years ago
Characteristics of Domesticated Plants
- Domesticated plants genetically distinct
- artificial vs natural selection
- Wild plants: selection pressures from the environment
- traits have ‘survival value’
- Domesticated plants: traits are breed to suit human needs
- not always advantageous
- Example: Ensheating husks or non-shattering heads in corn and wheat
Centers of Plant Domestication
- Vavilov (Russian botanist) proposed 8 centers of crop domestication
- highest diversity = origin
- wild strains key for genetic diversity
- Trading & migration expanded range of crops
- Some crops do better in new areas
- most of US crops are not native
- coffee native to Ethiopia